Thirty-eight  

SEAGLASS – 1988

Rose stormed off in the other direction, disappearing down the beach, her lion’s tail swinging as she walked. And Conor the pumpkin chased after her. If I didn’t feel so ill, I might have found the whole scene funny.

‘You’re the youngest Darker sister under there, aren’t you?’ asked a boy I recognized from Rose’s sixteenth birthday party at Seaglass. He sat down next to me, so close that I could smell the beer on his breath. The wine had made me very sleepy, and I didn’t try to stop him at first, as he attempted to remove the sheet from my head and peek underneath. I was tired of pretending to be a ghost and of being treated like one all my life, but part of me wanted to stay hidden. I pulled the sheet back down. ‘I wish it was Daisy Darker under there,’ he said, backing off a little. ‘I was hoping that the bottle might land on her if I spun it,’ he whispered, even though there was nobody else left by the fire to hear.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so said nothing.

‘Or maybe we could play a little game of trick-or-treat if you don’t like spin the bottle?’ he suggested innocently, as though we were discussing what board game to play on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

‘I don’t know how to play trick-or-treat,’ I replied.

‘It’s easy, I’ll teach you. But come a little closer first, you’re shivering. I’ll keep you warm.’

I looked around for my sisters, but they were nowhere to be seen. Everyone else had wandered away from the fire except the boy. And me. I shuffled an inch closer and he smiled.

‘First, the trick,’ he said. ‘If you can guess which hand I’m holding this chocolate coin in, you can eat the treat, but if you guess wrong, you have to take the sheet off your head.’

I looked at the chocolate in its shiny gold foil wrapping and nodded. The game seemed simple and harmless enough. He put his hands behind his back, then held two closed fists out in front of me to choose from. The hand I chose was empty, so I took off the sheet and he smiled.

‘That’s better, and look how beautiful you are. No wonder your sisters always want to leave you at home, you outshine them both. Play again?’

I think that was the first time a stranger had ever paid me a proper compliment. I knew I wasn’t really beautiful, not compared to Rose or Lily, but I confess that I liked someone saying that I was, even if it wasn’t true. I nodded a silent agreement to play again, and he held out two closed fists. I chose wrong a second time.

‘I’m afraid that means one of these comes undone,’ he said, unhooking one of the clips on my dungaree dress. When I lost again, he unhooked the other. Then he tried to kiss me and I tried to let him. I had never been kissed before. It was cold and wet, and I kept my mouth firmly closed as he tried to stick his tongue inside it. I closed my eyes too, as though I didn’t want to see what was happening.

I’d always dreamt of Conor being the first boy who I kissed, perhaps because he was the only boy I really knew. I’m sure I wasn’t the only girl in the world to fantasize about their sister’s boyfriend, and it was him I imagined as I let this eighteen-year-old stranger kiss thirteen-year-old me. I don’t expect people to understand, but according to all the doctors I spent my childhood visiting, I only had a couple of years left. I didn’t know then what the most recent doctor had said to Nancy, about a dramatic change in my life expectancy. And I didn’t want to die never having been kissed. When you know you can’t make long-term plans, it’s easy to let yourself make short-term mistakes.

‘Try to relax,’ the boy whispered, kissing my neck, and I noticed the shiny foil chocolate on the black sand behind us. It was never in either of his hands. Those lying fingers were busy instead sliding up and under my top, before pulling it off over my head. I was wearing a hand-me-down training bra and felt nothing but shame. The cold air stole my breath from me, tiny clouds of it escaping from my mouth. It reminded me of the cloud creatures I used to try to see in the sky when I was a little girl, and I imagined seeing a lion, a witch and a pumpkin as the boy reached behind my back, trying, and failing, to unfasten my bra.

I saw someone dressed as a devil run past laughing and I felt afraid, even though I knew it was just a costume. Nana taught us that the devil is not a fictional man with a red cape and horns, he’s the voice inside our heads that tells us to do things we shouldn’t, he’s the eyes that pretend not to see, and the ears that pretend not to hear. He’s you, he’s me, he’s all of us. The full moon was a flirt that night, teasing the sky with little glimpses of itself, only occasionally coming out from behind the clouds. They all started to look like devils too. The boy kissed me again, still trying to take off my bra.

‘Wait, stop,’ I said, feeling very sick all of a sudden.

‘You’re so beautiful, I just want to see it,’ the boy said, staring at my chest.

‘See what?’ I asked.

‘Your scar. You won’t die if we do this, will you? Can I touch it?’

I knew there and then that if that was what it was like to be normal, I’d rather be me.

I pushed him away, covered myself up, and fled.

‘Freak!’ he called after me, then laughed.

I cried, because he was right: I was a freak. A freak with a broken heart, who would never love, or be loved. A freak who had been kissed for the first time by a horrible, disgusting boy. A freak who wanted to disappear. But first, I wanted to go home.

I couldn’t see Rose or Conor anywhere on the beach, but I thought I could hear Lily laughing with one of the boys behind the rocks. She has always craved attention, especially from men. Little girls who lose their fathers spend their lives looking for them in every man they meet. In my tired, slightly drunken state, I thought Lily would look after me. The rocks were covered in barnacles and seaweed, but I kept climbing until I was high enough to see without being seen.

I was right, Lily was talking to a boy. The boy was Conor.

‘Rose is upset with me,’ he said, then took a swig from what looked like a bottle of whisky, just like the ones his dad liked to drink.

‘She’ll get over it, pumpkin,’ Lily replied, grabbing the bottle from him and taking a swig herself. She screwed up her face as though she hated the taste, but then drank some more. ‘Besides, Rose is going to university, you’ve got a job on the local newspaper . . . it was never going to be forever. You’ll be breaking up soon anyway when she meets some brainiac at Cambridge. May as well rip off the Band-Aid now if you ask me.’

‘How can you say that? I love Rose,’ Conor said, sounding like he might cry. ‘And she loves me.’ Denial is often a down payment for future heartbreak.

‘Then why, deep down, do you already know she’s going to dump you?’ said Lily. She was still in her underwear, but had a towel wrapped around her. ‘I know the truth hurts, and I’m sorry to be the one saying it, but we both know Rose is out of your league. I understand how you’re feeling, Rose is leaving me too,’ Lily said, taking a step towards Conor. ‘Maybe we could help each other feel better?’

‘How?’ he asked, taking another sip of whisky.

I stared at Lily’s feet as she took another step towards him. Her toenails were painted red, and I knew the varnish must have belonged to our mother. I had stolen all of Lily’s nail varnishes a week earlier, when she refused to let me borrow any of them. There were ten in total, and I used them to paint each of my toenails a different colour, before burying each tiny glass bottle in the sand outside Seaglass. I imagined the crabs that lived in Blacksand Bay finding them, and taking it in turns to paint one another’s claws.

Lily’s towel dropped onto the ground and she took one more step towards Conor, until their lips were almost touching. Her white underwear seemed to glow in the moonlight against a backdrop of black sand.

‘Rose might be the clever one in the family, but there are all kinds of things I know how to do that she doesn’t,’ Lily said, not taking her eyes off his. ‘I could show you if you like? Or we could just kiss it better?’ she added, pressing herself up against him. ‘Just tonight, then never again? It could be our little secret?’

But they didn’t just kiss.

I watched from my hiding place above the rocks while they did what they did beneath them.

One Mississippi . . . Two Mississippi . . . Three Mississippi . . .

Conor accidentally called Lily ‘Rose’ at one point. But she didn’t seem to mind.

One Mississippi . . . Two Mississippi . . . 

I think it was the toxic mix of shock, and revulsion, and heartbreak that prevented me from moving or saying a word. There are times when we all stand still while the ghosts of our pasts run by. And that’s how I felt: like a ghost. I watched, unable to look away, just like people rubbernecking at a car crash, until it was over.

One Mississippi . . . 

Then I slipped on the rocks, and they both looked up and saw me.